July 31, 2010

Joe brought a copy of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. I had read the book a few months ago, sort of liked it but wasn't crazy about it, and was curious on how the movie came out. Joe has always said he liked it. He'd been to the theater to see it. I hardly ever get to the theater. Just waiting to go see the next Harry Potter film. I'm more contented to see things at home. Zeus, played by the cool Sean Bean, is missing his lightning bolt and he's all cranky. You'd think a god could keep hold of his shit. You wouldn't leave that kind of thing just lying about. Zeus blames Percy Jackson, the son of Poseiden and Catherine Keener, who doesn't know he's a half-god and doesn't have the lightning bolt. You can't argue with a god like Zeus, he's kind of a dick. Percy gets attacked and the secret is out. Percy is son of an immortal Greek God. Pierce Brosnan, Percy's wheelchair bound teacher is really a centaur, and Percy's best friend is a Satyr. His mom takes him to a special camp for demi-gods but she can't enter the place and is kidnapped by Hades. Percy discovers some more about his new situation and his powers. He's good with water, being the son of the god of the seas and all. Still he doesn't have the lightning bolt and now Hades wants it. He's willing to trade Percy's mom for it, or kill her, he doesn't much care which. Steve Coogan plays Hades. I've liked him in some other things but here he's a weak Hades, more foppish rock star than god. The movie is packed with effects from one end to the other and some are prettydarn good looking. The movie moves along briskly and there isn't much wasted time between action scenes either. There's lots of good sets and places to see. Director Chris Columbus is used to making big movies what with doing the first two Harry Potter films. Many HP fans think they are the weakest and they maybe right. I still like them after repeated watchings. I think they fit the feel of the first two books quite well. Things change with Azkaban, and Alfonso Cuaron was a good choice to change the direction of the films. Like the HP books the Rick Roidan novel was pretty heavily edited to create the movie version of Percy's story. Mostly I enjoyed it, might even buy a copy if I got it cheap.

I had been jonesing to see World Without End for the last couple of weeks. I don't have a copy so most likely the last time I saw this was at the MST3K Live show in July 1992. I didn't hardly remember any of it. The version on the DVD is wide screen. It's from a two pack, with Satillite In The Sky, that Sperhauk found for 3 bucks. We picked it for the second feature. Hugh Marlowe and Rod Taylor are part of a crew that's going on a trip to circumnavigate Mars. They run into a storm in space and bury the needle on their space speedometer. Over a hundred miles a second. They pass out and awaken after they crash in some snow. Below the snow line they discover it's earth and they are way into the future. People have mutated into ugly one eyed cavemen who attack with clubs and spears. Luckily the 4 astronauts have guns with them. They find that the mutants aren't the only humans. Some have been hiding in caves for centuries, living peaceful lives, at least until the time travellers come. The guys find some romance in the future. All the ladies are pretty and dress in short dresses. Kind of like those Vargas girls above. Vargas is credited in the film for set sketches. Those might be nice to see. The men from the past also find some trouble in the future. One of the cave dwellers is jealous that the head man's daughter likes one of the time travellers better than him. He commits murder and frames the outsiders. Isn't that always the way. Luckily one of the women had seen what really happened and the guys are saved. The guilty guy runs out of the cave only to be clubbed to death by the mutants. Fitting punishment. The guys chase the mutants away, by killing the leader in mortal combat, and start an above ground community. It's written and directed by Edward Bernds. The movie is fairly low budget, much of the movie is shot outdoors and all the interiors amount to a few very plain sets. Still, it does the job. The guys get attacked by a pair of huge mutated spiders at one point. They are pretty funny looking. The script isn't too bad, a bit on the cheesy side, science accuracy ignored of course. Gave me a chuckle and had an ok ending. Worth the trouble to watch, maybe even again in 18 years.

Every day Lego Diem drops another interesting picture for people to scope out and he provides links to the creator's media distribution outlet. LD has posted a couple of the things that I have stuck up out there. Thanks. The content is as varied as builder's are varied. I find it a very enjoyable and positive site. I feel better after seeing the pictures there, especially mine. Haha. That's Shuttle Shop by Jemppu M up above. I love all the props in the scene. Great sticker work, all LEGO stickers, too. Jemppu has many other photo's on Flickr of his really fun LEGO work. Worth checking out.

Thats Jemppu's Pirates Laundry Day from his Flickr photostream. It made me laugh. A little further on there's a Cobi set review that was very interesting. I have a bit of an interest in Cobi Bricks, just like I have a curious streak about all the LEGO clone and knockoff bricks. Chris Doyle has a nice series of blog posts that review some of the knockoff sets that a few Chinese toy companies produce. Often they just out and out copy a LEGO set and sell them. That series is worth a look at too. I don't care for the people who rip off LEGO's patents, or steal parts and sets, but I have less antagonistic attitudes against the clone manufactures who aren't infringing on patents. It's part of Capitalism, patents run out, etc. Every now and again these companies actually produce some interesting parts that LEGO doesn't. In the Jemppu M picture on the right are some of those rather interesting Cobi parts. I don't have any of those parts but I kind of wish I did. I'll have to make due with some MegaBlok pieces that I am saving. Most of them are minifig accessories. Some purists wouldn't like seeing them in a MOC but I'm not too fussy about that. A plate with studs on both sides is an interesting part to contemplate.

July 30, 2010

I am excited to see new HP sets coming and it got me interested in making some more HP works. I started wanting to make some bookends and it morphed into this. There are 29 minifigs and that barely makes a dent in the cast. You can see more pictures of some of the scenes at my Flickr photostream or on MOCpages.

July 28, 2010

I'm running behind on getting these posts done. I spent Saturday at the Mall of America watching over the undersea diorama that Brian and I built, with some fun additions from Matt and Max, and that really blew getting anything done. Then sunday I was doing laundry and shopping in the morning.

It was nearly 10 AM when I put on the copy of Children of Men that I got from Netflix. I hardly ever look at material on movies I haven't seen but stuff seeps through the cracks and I do hear things that make me curious. It seems to be a popular movie, the IMDb has it rated #189 in their top 250 and it scores an 8.1 user rating. The movie was co-written and directed by Alfonzo Cuaron. It's based on a novel by P. D. James. Not a writer I read, tried one, the writing didn't agree with me, never read any more. That happens occasionally, I move on. Cuaron directed Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban before COM and I liked HP3 quite a bit. It's 2027 in COM and the future isn't looking too good for the human race. Women can't get pregnant and the society is falling apart. The story is set in London, where some sort of order exists, making it an attractive place for those in need. But things aren't that good in the old sod. There's barely enough for the citizens and there's certainly not enough for the refugees or fugees. They get tossed into camps, places that look pretty fucked up. Clive Owen plays our main hero guy, Julianne Moore plays Clive's ex-wife and the leader of a group, the Fishies, that wants equal rights for fugees. Yeah, like that's going to happen. Haves don't give it up to the have-nots when there isn't much to be have'n. There's a revolution brewing under the camp's surface. Julianne has found a newly pregnant woman and she wants to bring her to the Human Project. Possibly they are a group of scientists devoted to curing the fertility problem. Maybe they exist and maybe they don't. We never find out. They are on an island somewhere, so our group need to connect with a boat going there. Last place to get it before it leaves is just off shore of a refugee camp. Clive's pal, played by Michael Caine, leads them to a friend who can get them in to the camp. It goes bad when they are there. They barely escape in a rowboat. Nearly everyone dies but the girl and her baby. It's not a happy movie much. It's an impressive film both technically and in it's message but I certainly don't want to watch such an ernest reminder that people can suck and we occasionally have something to hope for. Cuaron is known for some long shots in his movies. One of my favorite shots in Harry Potter And The Prisoner of Azkaban is this amazing long take in the Leaky Cauldron when Harry and Mr Weasley talk about Sirius Black. I've watched it many times because it is so wonderful. It's also distracting me out of the movie, a mixed blessing, mostly my fault. There's a couple of nice ones in COM but I come to find out that they are digitally edited from a series of long takes. It is one long camera shot for sure but it's made up of several shots. Seems to take some of the magic away but it still looks good. There's always that great shot in the Tony Jaa movie The Protector.

Back in the ancient past I picked up a couple of laserdisc box sets that Universal put out. They each featured four different science fiction thrillers from an even more ancient Golden Age. One set I got because it had the absolute best looking copy of The Monolith Monsters at the time. It's my all time favorite 50's science fiction movie. I still have the laserdisc sets but don't actually watch them anymore. I transfered everything to dvdr back 4-5 years ago. I'm probably just keeping them for the packaging since the 7 of the 8 movies were later collected into The Classic Sci-Fi Ultimate Collection. The somewhat better It Came From Outer Space was given it's own dvd release with a commentary and a few other extras. The dvd collection is pretty extra free, only having the trailer for each movie. While looking through the letter M section in my box of home made dvd's I found a dvdr copy of one of those movies that I had made from the laserdiscs. I watched it and set the dvdr aside to get rid of. I'm always behind on my dvd housekeeping.

Monster On The Campus was the movie on dvdr. Arthur Franz plays a professor at a college. He gets a coelacanth that he doesn't know has been blasted with radioactivity. That's not good. Not a whole lot happens for a while, usual intro bits and set up, some college activities. We meet Troy Donahue, who's playing a hunky college guy, and we meet the proffessor's gal. Then an extra shaggy dog gets sort of crazy and tries to bite some people. A murder takes place and the cops start looking into the weird killing. What attacked the victim? Arthur puts two and two together and figures out the fish is deadly. Contact with the radioactive blood causes the contactee to change and grow into a monster. It happened to the dog when he licked up the coelacanth's blood and it happened to Arthur when he got scratched.

That's Arthur on the left, the monster in the middle, and on the right, the monster's bloody handprint being stared at by the cops. They don't figure it all out until it's too late and the poor monster is dead. Even though he was a victim himself he still had to pay the ultimate price for murder. It was a different time. I enjoyed the movie and I had seen it a few times already. It's a bit of a slow start and the monster makeup isn't the greatest but it gets the job done.

The Monster That Challenged The World is a 1957 movie written by David Duncan. He wrote the previous movie and several other classic sf flicks. He has an interesting body of work. He wrote some sf novels back in the fifties. I remember liking the cover to Dark Dominion and buying a copy at Chester Cuthbert's house in the early 1970's. It's got a Richard Powers cover and he's one of my favorite painters. I don't know that I ever read the copy that I eventually peeled the cover off of, I think I did. Doesn't matter.

This movie has giant prehistoric slugs doing the attacking. Some eggs get released from the sea bed by an earthquake. They hatch out some diabolical critters of a giantic size. I don't care for plain old slugs, too jelly like, I would hate the giant kind. Western star Tim Holt plays the military guy who has to deal with the recent outbreak of giant slugs in the Salton Sea. There's a pretty gal for Tim to get a bit of romancing in with and her boss is the science guy of the piece and he's played by one of my favorite character actors, Hans Conried. The monsters chow down on the local populous and it's up to Tim to clean up the monsters. Don't worry, I think less people got eaten here than in Jaws. It's a fun little movie with a fair to middling monster. He's not quite as cool as he is in the pictures above but I'd hate to run into him in the back yard.

I'm having trouble finding time to get the Science Fiction Sunday post done so I thought I'd mention another bunch of comics that I picked up at the Digital Comic Museum. It's a public domain free download comic site. Lots of old comics from the 30's and 40's and into the 50's. Baffling Mysteries had some great covers. DCM has over a dozen issues of the early 1950's comic. The stories are typical comic horror stories, not too scarey but occasionally weird. Lots of demons, ghosts, and various other monsters, stories of revenge, very typical of the horror short story that you'd have found in fiction magazines of the time. The covers are about as racy as they get.

I like the lady in red and that man eating plant in the last pic on the right. Sadly there's no story inside to go along with the cover. By the covers alone you knew exactly who they are selling that comic to and it would be me. Kids and adults read comics in the 50's. I'd have bought these when they were new. The art inside ranges from fair to good. Occasionally something slightly different is tried with various degrees of success. Worth a look for the horror comic fan.

July 25, 2010

Somehow Ink got into Sperhauk's NetFlix queue. He doesn't remember why and now that he's seen it he's still not sure. I myself just signed up for NetFlix. I had seen the blurb on the movie a few days ago and considered putting it in my own queue but didn't. Ink turned up at Sperhauk's on BluRay turned up last friday and I was interested in watching it. There's a little girl who lives with her grandparents in an urban fantasy. There are warriors, from alternate realities or astral planes different than our own, who crossover to our world to battle. The good guys are the Storytellers. They prowl the night, break into your house, and deliver good dreams with a poke to your noggin. They have enemies, the Incubi, who deliver nightmares in suffocating shadows. They all have great kung fu skills and magical leaping abilities. Ink, a rag cloaked character with a huge honker, steals the little girl's soul from her body to trade for a membership in the Incubi. The girl's father is the tragic figure of the piece. He's lost his wife and fallen so far his wife's parents took custody of the daughter. They come to his work to tell him his daughter is in a coma and after a heated exchange he leaves to work a big deal. He winds up in the same hospital as his daughter after a car accident. The Storytellers try to rescue the girl and are hindered by the Incubi. Dad, at his daughter's bedside, struggles with his inner demons. There's all sorts of aligorical aspects to the story which was written and directed by Jamin Winans. He shot the movie in Denver for a quarter of a million smackers. It looks pretty for that little cash. The acting is a mixed bag, some better than others. I wondered if acting was the runner up to the physical stuff in chosing the actors for some of the parts. The story concept is sort of interesting but deep down it's a melodrama all gussied up in jump cuts, bursts of light, pathos, acrobatics and flashbacks. It's not going to pull some people in but some will appreciate the walk down a path less trodden. It seemed to get compared to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and movies that don't fit the normal range of film story telling. I really like ESOTSM and Ink isn't quite up that level but it was pretty well done. We had some complaining, the others seemed to dislike it more than I did. I liked the different universe, and the little girl played by Quinn Hunchar was really worth seeing, but I didn't care for all the daddy business. Not a movie I'm goin to feel the need to own but I was glad to see it.

I wasn't so glad to see Night of Death when it was over. That was our next choice. It's an 1980 French film titled La Nuit De La Mort. A young woman who goes to work at a home for the elderly. They have some rules that seem odd, like no leaving the home's grounds until your first 2 months have passed, or no phone calls, but the girl wants the job so she goes along with them. The rules aren't to surprising. The home has a big secret. They're immortal cannibals. Which begs the question, what if they live so long they eat everyone? I don't know how my brain thinks of these things. We find out about their practice in the first few minutes when the current nurse is murdered, stripped naked and disembowled. Let the feasting begin! The new replacement doesn't know she's being fattened up for the next bi-monthly nosh fest. The movie drags on as the young lady goes about her duties. Really, almost nothing happens and it's just not that interesting. The elderly are an odd bunch, kind of creepy. I wouldn't want to live with them, especially without a lock on my bedroom door. Our young lady gathers clues about the goings on in the house but fails to act. Next thing you know it's time for the chow down. There's a fair bit of gore at the start with the disemboweling and some more at the end when most of the elderly are chopped and beaten to death. The girl escapes only to be part of a really stupid ending that destroyed any possibility of my liking the movie. The release is from Synapse and it looks pretty good. They sure bring out some crappy movies. Still it's another time NetFlix has saved me from buying a movie and it's another movie to add to the movies I've seen list. And that list isn't about quality, it's about quantity. At least I know I won't have to watch it again.

July 22, 2010

I didn't spot Robert Osborne in The Beverly Hillbilliespilot when I watched it a few months ago but I've only been a fan of his work for the last 10-12 years. He was so much younger 50 years ago. He plays a worker at the bank where the Clampett's have their money. He's only in a brief bit of the pilot, bringing some news to Mr. Drysdale, and he appears once more in a later episode. You might not know who he is but those of us who watch movies on Turner Classic Movies would recognize him. He's been the host of many a movie for the last 16 years. His tv work only amounts to a handfull of episodes in the late 50's. Following Lucile Ball's advice he went to work as a journalist, eventually becoming a columnist at The Hollywood Reporter. He wrote film histories and hosted movies at The Movie Channel before going to Turner Classic Movies. It's really one of my favorite channels, I'm always watching something from there. Last night I watched some Myrna Loy movies, one of which had her playing a woman of mixed blood who's murdering the women who snubbed her in college because of her race. Mostly I know Myrna Loy from the Thin Man movies where she plays along side William Powell as Nick and Nora Charles. Those half a dozen comedies belong in everyone's film collection.

July 19, 2010

The Mall Of America opened August 11, 1992 and I went. I didn't have a digital camera back then. These pictures were taken with some sort of SLR. I don't remember which camera I used. I have a old Canon and an even older Praktica that I bought when I was young and it was a fairly cheap but durable SLR. I seem to remember it was about $160 back in the early 70's. They are in a backpack in a cabinet where they have been for a long time without me casting an eyeball in there. I should get rid of them but no one wants to pay anything for them. It seems a shame to throw them out and I am saving up for my own garbage house when I retire. In the spirit of not throwing out enough I am glad that I kept a copy of the photos here. I had pasted a copy of these pics into a scrap book with a big batch of photos from my walk around the Mall. I made three trips around the mall, one for each main floor, and visited the LEGO store before I went home. I scanned the 4 by 6 inch pictures at 400 dpi and lightened them up in Picasa. They look better than I expected.

The basic superstructure with it's large pieces is still there. Most everything but the dinosaurs is gone. There are plenty more pictures on my Flicker set. There is also a set of pictures that show the store as it was in 2008. I had put them on Brickshelf but that's so hard to find anything because of their labeling limitiations. I have some pictures of the clock that I will post up there soon. The whole store is headed for remodel and Erik says he's heard that everything must go, even the poor dinos.

Bruce Campbell is the co-star of Mindwarp and the only reason that I have a copy. I made a dvdr from an old VHS tape I picked up used somewhere. That's the UK tape packaging, not the one I had. It looked more interesting than the US release. The movie was called Brain Slasher in some other countries. It's not a good title. The movie was made by Fangoria production who did three movies and folded up that end of the biz. They still do the Fangoria magazine. I haven't read it in a while. Not a magazine I ever felt the need to buy. Even when I worked at DreamHaven I would rarely read a copy. The movie came out in 1992 and it still hasn't made it to dvd. The copy I have will certainly do me, it's not a movie that I would want to shell out more cash just to upgrade. It's the future, 2037, and something wrong with the outside world. People died off and the rest are holed up in underground enclaves living their life jacked into a dreamlike cyberspace of some sort. Marta Alicia, who changed her name to Marta Martin and was recently in Star Trek (2009), is unhappy with the life. And no wonder. They make y0u get out of the simulation to eat and go to the bathroom. When her interferring with her mother's dreams causes mom to die, the gal is tossed out of the society. Some cops come byMarta's, snatch her up, and leave her in the wasteland. She meets Bruce Campbell who been surviving there for a while. Besides the deadly radiation and ultraviolet rays, from lack of ozone, there are underground dwelling critters that eat you. Raw. The battle their way about and finally get caught by the mutants. Bruce gets put in the mines and Marta gets chosen to be the new bride of the leader. It turns out to be her long lost father, then it turns out to be a dream. It's a weak story and not much happens, then it's confusing and a bit of a cheat. There's some gore by KNB Effects and they usually do a good job. You can still find the vhs tape out there and there are lots of torrents but there isn't much reason to bother, other than Bruce dressed in fur.

I am still working my way through the dvdr's and the 1958 Republic feature Missile Monsters was next in line. It's an edited version of the 1950 serial Flying Disc Men of Mars. I had watched that serial just recently and it was kind of dull and long. This distills the movie down to the main elements and it runs right along. The movie runs about 75 minutes and the serial was 167 minutes. Shortening the running time still doesn't make it a lot better but it's over quicker. Not much of a recommendation, huh. It's ok, most everyone isn't going to be seeing this anytime soon. I know I won't. Some alien guy from Mars gets shot down by a scientist and the two join forces to take over the world. There's some criminals who join their group and some heroes that crash plane after plane and car after car in an effort to catch the bad guys. Not great, but short. There are much better features and serials out there. Go find one of those and watch that instead.

July 17, 2010

I had a vague flash of memory of the trailer for Ninja Assassin but I didn't know the movie had a screenplay written by J. Michael Straczynski of Babylon 5 fame. I'm a big B5 fan, reminding myself mentally to spin those discs again soon, but I haven't kept up with his work on other projects. Joe's work on this was a last minute re-write for the Wachowski Siblings, who were producing. Straczynski got the script and wrote a whole new version in 53 hours. The original script was written by Matthew Sand. The movie was directed by Jake McTeigue, who's mostly a first or second assistant director. He worked on No Escape, Street Fighter, Dark City, the Matrix films and Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones. Quite a mix, huh. In 2006 he directed V for Vendetta. I haven't seen it and seem to have little interest in it. I had more interest in Ninja Assassin.

Europol is investigating a secret ninja assassin group who charge 100 pounds of gold to kill someone and have been supplying assassin's for a thousand years. The Ozunu Clan have a nice place up in the mountians where they beat stolen children into heartless killers. They seem to have a good program, weeding out the less than stellar pupils by tying them to a wooden pole and stabbing them in the heart. I guess it's a motivator, though there are always new children to kidnap and torture into family. That's a scene, in LEGO by Kenshe8, of one of the flashback scenes. One kid has beaten another quite well.

Rain, the popular Korean pop star plays Raizo as an adult. Others play him as a child in the long stream of flashbacks that show us his training, his growing affection for a young girl in the group, and his personal one on one meetings with Lord Ozunu. Sho Kosugi plays the cold hearted master so well you can only want to see him dead by the end of the film. Raizo's gal pal wants out, runs away, is caught and murdered. Raizo grows less happy with his lot in life and after his first mission he resigns his job by slashing the face of Lord Ozunu. He puts his eye out. Time passes and Raizo recovers with his super ninja healing powers. There's a fight every few minutes and the air is often thick with CGI blood sprays, fast moving weapons, and flying severed limbs. Eventually there's a huge showdown with Europol, the Ozunu Clan and Raizo. Nearly everyone gets cut into pieces. That's Rain and Sho Kosugi in their final battle up on the right. Not everyone would like it, the critics panned it when it came out, but it did make some money. I'm not planning to rush out and pick up a copy but I'm glad that I saw it.

I'm pretty sure I hadn't seen the1956 British science fiction movie Satellite In The Sky before. It's out in a two pack with World Without End, as well as a 4 pack under the Turner Classic Movies line. Sperhauk found the two disc dvd at Half Price Books Clearance tent for 3 bucks. That's the kind of price I like in a dvd. I haven't seen Worlds Without End in a long time. I first saw it when Mystery Science Theater 3000 did a live show back July 11, 1992 and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen it since. In Satellite In The Sky some British science guys are building a rocket. We get a bit of air plane flying first. The pilot of the plane, Kieron Moore, will be the guy piloting the first rocket into space. Lois Maxwell, Miss Moneypenny in the Bond series, plays a reporter who sneaks onto the rocket when no one's looking. The rocket has a science mission on the surface. Below of course there's some sinister stuff going on. The military is going to send up a new tritonium bomb and blast it off in space. It's too dangerous to blow off on the earth's surface.

There's an annoying science guy from the military who comes along with the regular crew. That's him in the middle. The ship blasts off and gets into orbit. They have panels on the side of the ship that open and a retractable bay window extends out. They have bay windows on each side of the ship. That's so weird. It will make sense later on. The guys ready the bomb and launch it. A rocket on the bomb is supposed to push it out of the ship's gravity field but the rocket fails and the bomb is attracted to the ship. They can't shake it with some rocket thrusts. It's going to blow in a few hours and they can't get away. I did read that this concept has been debunked. Oh well. It was sort of exciting and the reason for the bay windows becomes evident as they guys suit up in their nifty space suits and tackle the bomb mano a mano. The airlock is an elevator that extends out of the ship which seems to have some sort of artificial gravity. Lois Maxwell serves coffee to the crew after being discovered unconcious in a storage locker. Attempts to fix the bomb are a big no go and the annoying science guy and the rocket engineer grab the bomb and using their suit thrusters take the bomb away from the ship. The ship escapes and the rest of the crew are saved. There's a bit of romance with Kieron and Lois. Opposites attract, then the screamin' starts. It's a pretty low budgetfilm from the looks of it. There are a lot of models and most of them look ok. The effects that go with the models are operating at a much lower level. Sometimes I laughed out load. Not that I would hold that against this movie. It was fun, with some dull spots, and for the genre fan probably worth a glance. I'll certainly keep an eye out for this to run on TCM and if I see the dvd for cheap I might buy that. Who knows what tomorrow brings. I do! It's more science fiction. Yay!